I’m Right, You’re Wrong…Right?
“Where is the poison? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both drink, and find out who is right... and who is dead.”
Remember that scene? Wesley, a.k.a. The Dread Pirate Roberts, sits across from Vizzini, the goblets of wine between them, ostensibly one of them poisoned. There is clearly going to be a winner and a loser. The stakes are high; one is right and gets to live; one is wrong and ends his time on this mortal coil.
Let me now take you to another battle of wits where the stakes are much lower but the contestants no less invested in being right. At Thanksgiving, my family begins a discussion on how often everyone washes their sheets. One cousin, a once-a-week sheet washer, is appalled at the cousin who declares once a month is all that’s necessary. (In the background, I’m mumbling, “Wait, you guys have a schedule?”)
WHO is right? What IS the proper sheet-washing frequency? My paternal family — whose motto might be “There’s the Coover way and the wrong way,” — embarks on a 20-minute conversation to get to the bottom of this. We argue to the death….of any well-rounded, satisfying conversation. Several innocent bystanders are scared off.
The culture of approaching a discussion as if it’s a battle of wits and the winner gets a prize extends well beyond the microcosm of my family. When we are challenged, a lot of us shift into defense mode, even if it’s just someone trying to be helpful by suggesting a better way to accomplish a task. Or maybe it’s someone simply wanting to engage in a discussion.
If you start a conversation with the assumption you’re right and your mission is to defend your position, you’re probably not being a very good listener. As David Sturt and Todd Nordstrom say in their Forbes article, Why Always Being Right Can Be Wrong:
“You think you know what you’re doing, so you rush people through explanations, don’t stop to hear others out, and even disrespect conversations by trying to take on two or three things at once.”
Some of the best articles I’ve written have been collaborative. Other people have lent their expertise to them and editors have suggested ways to make them funnier or more engaging or poignant. This would not have happened if I’d insisted the way I first wrote it was “right.” There’s a reason the acknowledgment section of a book is always several pages long; no great thing was ever created in a vacuum of one.
If your goal is to remain steadfast in your beliefs and nothing more, coming from a place of always being right will serve that end. But that’s not really why we’re here, is it? We’re here to learn, to grow, to create great and lasting things — structures, concepts, ideas, relationships. Those get created by putting aside ego, listening and collaborating, even if the only thing you're collaborating with someone on is a good, satisfying conversation where both of you expand your horizons a little.
After much pontificating, Vizzini smugly chooses his goblet and drinks, promptly keeling over dead. Princess Buttercup says, “And to think, all that time it was your cup that was poisoned.” Wesley responds…
“They were both poisoned. I spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocane powder.”
In the end, trying to be right couldn’t save Vizzini; by the time the poison was in the goblets, he didn’t have a chance.
Imagine, though, that Buttercup, Wesley and Vizzini had instead sat down around that rock, shared some un-poisoned wine and had a discussion. They probably would have found a mutually agreeable arrangement. Vizzini wanted riches, which Wesley (The Dread Pirate Roberts) had, and no one wanted to hang out with Prince Humperdink. Granted, it would have made for a pretty boring movie.
I’d like to think, though, we’re building a world we want to live in, not just one that prompts us to go get the popcorn.
Fundamental # 4 GIVE UP THE NEED TO BE RIGHT
Keep your ego, your personal agenda, and your judgments out of the way of doing what’s best for the team or the customer. Don’t let being right interfere with being able to hear others and see possible new solutions you haven’t seen before.
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